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Painting: Van Stein |
Undercover with FBI Counterintelligence
March 1999
"You shouldn't be going to Cuba, sir." The check-in clerk at Baltimore-Washington Airport gave me a scorching look after examining my Air Jamaica ticket: Baltimore-Montego Bay-Havana. "You're an American citizen."
She motioned irately at my U.S. passport in case I hadn't noticed.
And I could not be bothered to flash my Press card. (Working journalists are exempt from the U.S. Treasury Department's ban on travel to Cuba.)
"I
don't know if I can check you in."
She stalked off to consult a supervisor, returning a minute later. "I can only check you in for Montego
Bay."
She sneered with triumph.
Customer Service issued me a boarding pass to Havana and sold me the Cuban visa (for $15) that Luis Fernandez of the Cuban Interest Section in D.C. failed to deliver.
A belt of this with ginger
set me up for the one-hour hop to Havana.
Even
from on high, Cuba looked barren and beat-up; its roads oddly vacant of
vehicles.
In contrast, Jose Marti Airport was fresh, modern, and colorful, if absent of travelers.
As
the first passenger to disembark our MD-80, I traversed Immigration and Customs
in five minutes.
My bags were x-rayed and a young Customs agent scanned me with a metal detector. Then he frisked me, and gestured at the bulges in both front pockets of my blue jeans. "What is?" he asked.
"Money."
I
dug into my pockets and produced two thick wads of Yankee dollars. In my left palm, all hundreds.
His
eyes popped. "How much? (This was more his curiosity than official
business.)
"About $4,000," I replied.
(U.S.
credit cards were not accepted in Cuba because U.S. credit card companies are
exempted from dispensing money to Cuba.
Plus I had cash expenses for Edward Lee Howard.)
Official
Cuba welcomed me (and especially my money) into their grubby mix.
State-run
dollar taxi drivers hovered
everywhere. One scampered to his South
Korean car and raced to greet me at the forecourt.
"How
much to Hotel Nacional?" I asked.
"It's
meter."
"Do
it."
Beneath
a sunny blue sky, I studied the carnival of poverty around me.
Giant billboards proclaimed Socialism or Death! at passing buses whose cramped passengers appeared to be suffocating to death in 82-degree heat and no air-conditioning. The car radio blared 20 year-old hits from Paul McCartney and Billy Joel. In 30 minutes, we reached the Nacional, about 2:45 p.m.
In contrast, Jose Marti Airport was fresh, modern, and colorful, if absent of travelers.
My bags were x-rayed and a young Customs agent scanned me with a metal detector. Then he frisked me, and gestured at the bulges in both front pockets of my blue jeans. "What is?" he asked.
"Let
me see."
He
looked at me in amazement. To him, this
was 16 years' salary. "Go
on."
Giant billboards proclaimed Socialism or Death! at passing buses whose cramped passengers appeared to be suffocating to death in 82-degree heat and no air-conditioning. The car radio blared 20 year-old hits from Paul McCartney and Billy Joel. In 30 minutes, we reached the Nacional, about 2:45 p.m.
Hotel Nacional processed me into its electric compost of Euro-trash and I ascended with the bellhop to my suite (rooms 705 and 706). It was drab and dowdy and... no, let us
assess what it was not:
With its dirty windows and stained carpet, it was not a five-star deluxe, as designated by Cuba.
Yet, all things being relative, it was probably luxurious by contemporary Cuban standards.
For as the bellhop said with pride, "It have hot water."
With its dirty windows and stained carpet, it was not a five-star deluxe, as designated by Cuba.
Yet, all things being relative, it was probably luxurious by contemporary Cuban standards.
For as the bellhop said with pride, "It have hot water."
Red-hot water. Red from rust.
Thirty seconds after settling from a flush, the toilet talked back, a hiccup that sounded like "Fi-del-POOP!"
I
washed my hands, gargled Listerine, and went downstairs to look for Al
Lewis. Grandpa Munster from the 1960s Munsters TV series supposedly lurked
in Havana hotel lobbies. (And why not? Under Fidel Castro, Cuba was spookier than 1313 Mockingbird Lane.)
The
Nacional's lobby is a long, high-ceilinged hall, policed at either end by a
pair of suited security men with receivers in their ears, on heightened alert
to ensure that only foreigners make use of the state-owned hotel and its U.S. dollars-only facilities.
The
most irritating feature of my "suite"was its odor.
It smelled like Poland.
If one could break down the main ingredients
of this smell, foremost would be stale tobacco, followed by low-grade building
materials (throw in asbestos), and poor ventilation.
The B.O. (in this case, building odor) of communism.
Cubans with
pesos (and even Cubans with Yankee dollars) are barred from entering;
second-class citizens in their own country.
I
inspected a display case of jewelry crafted in tortoise shell and black coral,
banned everywhere else in the world as endangered species.
A souvenir shop nearby peddled cheap
key-chains bearing
Che Guevara's likeness.
Not much of a
book selection, except for stacks of one title:
CIA Targets Fidel.
Al
Lewis wasn't in the lobby, so I strolled into the Nacional's serene grounds
overlooking the Malecon (sea wall and promenade) and the sea.
Outside, beneath swaying palms, the smell was still Poland. It could not be evaded. This rummy island was Poland-on-the-Caribbean.
Outside, beneath swaying palms, the smell was still Poland. It could not be evaded. This rummy island was Poland-on-the-Caribbean.
(Or as Edward Howard later put it, "This
is where Eastern Europe and Latin America meet.")
I rested my bones in a white wicker chair on the grand portico. Even the cushions reeked of rancid tobacco.
No
Al Lewis, inside or out. And no Ed
Howard, either, who, in any case, I did not expect until much later in the
afternoon.
I rested my bones in a white wicker chair on the grand portico. Even the cushions reeked of rancid tobacco.
Howard was somewhere in the city
holed up with his buddies from Cuban intelligence, the Direction Generale de Inteligencia (DGI).
I
sauntered out of the Nacional, one block to Hotel Capri. Their lobby was even more like Poland than
Poland.
No, that's not fair. To Poland.
No, that's not fair. To Poland.
And no Grandpa Munster.
Howard
looked a lot heavier than when we'd last met, 14 months earlier. Not only was he chunky, with a paunch, but
his face was thick and bloated, a picture of poor health. (Later, I caught a glimpse of his tongue:
yellow-green. But, hey, he'd just spent 12-plus hours flying overnight, Aeroflot, coach.)
Howard's DGI pals had decreed that an officer of theirs named Juan Hernandez should work with me.
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Vesco |
"Okay,"
I said, "I want Joanne Chesimard to write a book."
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Chesimard |
The Unknown Influence of the Chinese in Cuba.
"What
do you want to do in Cuba?" asked Hernandez.
"I'd
like to own a bar," I said.
"With him." I pointed
to Howard.
Hernandez
hooted. "I have people come in here
and say they want to invest $100 million in Cuba. And you just want to own a bar?" His eyes twinkled. "I like that."
I
hoped he liked it enough to hand me the keys to a bar.
"I
will make you a meeting," he said.
He gave me Castro's business card.
Not The Bearded One, but Elvira
Castro, director of something called Investments Promotion Center.
"Looking
for someone?" asked Howard.
"Yeah. Al Lewis."
"Who?"
"Sounds
scary," said Howard. "C'mon,
I'll buy you a drink."
He led me through the back portico, to a bar adjacent to the Salon de la Historie, whose walls celebrate colorful characters who stayed at the Nacional in more convivial times, including Mafia bosses Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante.
We
occupied a pair of stools at the bar: a mojito for me, Fanta orange soda for
Howard.
"Mind
if I smoke?" Howard produced a pack
of Salem cigarettes. "At least I've
switched to Lites. Busy day," he
added.
Upon
his arrival that morning, Howard received a call from the Cuban DGI. They wanted to see him immediately. So, though he was jet-lagged, Howard spent
most of the day at a safe house in Havana's Miramar district.
"I
was with Senor Deema," he said.
"Chief of the North American division. He's jet-black, trained in Leningrad. They all did back then. His first love was a Russian girl. I don't think he ever got over her. Deema asked me lots of questions about you. I told him about your working with Kryuchkov
and Prelin, that the Russians like you.
It didn't seem to matter. They
don't care much about the Russians any more.
They want to know you for themselves.
Deema has an idea for a book."
(Everyone
has an idea for a book.)
I
sipped my mojito. "Yeah?"
"In
1989 the Cubans rolled up a CIA spy ring.
Every one of the 28 agents the CIA recruited turned out to be
doubles, working for the Cubans. The DGI
is disappointed nothing big ever came of it in the media. They consider it one of their major coups and
would like to see more made of it. Maybe
a book."
I
shrugged. "That's what I'm here
for. What did they want to see you about?"
"Oh,"
said Howard. "Most of today was
spent on all the exams and interviews you have to take if you want to join the
CIA. They wanted to know every
detail."
"Why?"
"Obvious,
isn't it?" said Howard.
We moved on from book projects to business opportunities.
Howard
and I walked back to the Nacional. I
glanced around the lobby, checking out sofas.
"He
was 'Grandpa' in The Munsters. I read two books that say he's a fixture in
the Nacional and Capri lobbies."
He led me through the back portico, to a bar adjacent to the Salon de la Historie, whose walls celebrate colorful characters who stayed at the Nacional in more convivial times, including Mafia bosses Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante.
(Of course. But playing the skeptic, I had to hear him spell it out.)
"They'd like to get one of their people, somebody from Miami, into
the Agency. I told them everything I
knew. They laid on a pretty nice lunch,
a buffet. Surprisingly good food."
Howard
was exhausted from flying overnight then jumping straight into a daylong
debriefing, but he agreed to join me for dinner at El Floridita.
We
taxied to Old Havana.
The
daiquiri, supposedly invented here by Ernest Hemingway, tasted weak and
bland. I pushed it aside and ordered a mojito.
At
the next table, a cretinous 60-something Spaniard held hands with a teenage
Cuban girl.
I
asked Howard about Mila, the girlfriend I'd met when last in Moscow.
"It's
an on-again, off-again relationship," said Howard. "Currently off. She wanted to come to Cuba with me, but I
nixed that. She was here with me a year
ago, so to hell with her."
Howard
told me that a KGB officer named Vladimir Popov had first introduced him to
Havana ten years earlier. Popov, who
spent six years in Cuba after getting the boot from Washington for activities
incompatible with his diplomatic status (spying), taught Howard the lay of the
land.
Early
on, Howard considered settling in Havana with wife Mary and son Lee, he told me.
A house in the Miramar district had been offered to him by the Cubans for $1,000 per month. But he and Mary declined due to their dissatisfaction with the schooling Lee would receive.
Howard was equally happy their son had not been brought up in Moscow.
"I have a friend with a 13 year-old daughter," Howard told me. "One day she did not arrive home from school. Police were called, the search began. They found the girl in a brothel five days later. What happened was, the girl was walking home from school, a car pulled over, two men jumped out and dragged her in. They beat her, sold her virginity, a thousand bucks, raped her, and put her to work as a sex slave."
Outside,
El Floridita's colorful neon sign contrasted the otherwise low wattage of Old
Havana.
My sleep that night turned manic, punctuated by sudden awake-ness and odd sounds: a drumbeat at three a.m., probably produced by a power generator outside; later, two synthesized female voices holler, "We don't understand... noooo!"
And then a strobe light penetrated my brain.
The mojitos? I still haven't figured it out.
They
refused to seat us in the restaurant, a wiggy affair, because Howard's shorts
defied their dress code. So we grabbed a
bar table and ordered the Cuban Sandwich: Ham, cheese, pork, butter, mustard, a garnish
of near-rancid coleslaw.
A house in the Miramar district had been offered to him by the Cubans for $1,000 per month. But he and Mary declined due to their dissatisfaction with the schooling Lee would receive.
Howard was equally happy their son had not been brought up in Moscow.
"I have a friend with a 13 year-old daughter," Howard told me. "One day she did not arrive home from school. Police were called, the search began. They found the girl in a brothel five days later. What happened was, the girl was walking home from school, a car pulled over, two men jumped out and dragged her in. They beat her, sold her virginity, a thousand bucks, raped her, and put her to work as a sex slave."
My sleep that night turned manic, punctuated by sudden awake-ness and odd sounds: a drumbeat at three a.m., probably produced by a power generator outside; later, two synthesized female voices holler, "We don't understand... noooo!"
And then a strobe light penetrated my brain.
The mojitos? I still haven't figured it out.